How have you achieved such amazing outcomes on the Farm? Do hippies have easier births?

Women who are healthy and who give birth in a supportive, relaxing atmosphere have easier births. In the beginning years, the women at The Farm were strongly motivated to give birth with as little medical intervention as possible. (There were some nasty interventions that were routine in the 1960s that we wanted to escape.) Our guiding philosophy was appropriate use of technology. We midwives had become experts in helping parents-to-be relax as much as possible during labor and birth, and the fact that we allowed — even encouraged — eating and drinking during labor has surely contributed to our low rates of interventions. Also important: every woman knew that her baby's and her safety were our top priorities and that we would get them to a hospital if necessary or helpful.

Because we were isolated by lack of cars and telephones, we were able to form our own birth culture, free from outside pressures and fears. Each of us had the major advantage of knowing several hundred other women who had been able to give birth at home without medication, so childbirth education on The Farm was something you'd get every time you listened to a friend's birth story. We weren't exposed to television dramas and movies depicting birth as a frightening process.

Women do hear lots of frightening birth stories . . . Would it help if they didn't?

Don't listen to people's frightening birth stories while you're pregnant. The pathological levels of fear of labor pain have definitely helped to drive up national cesarean rates in most countries. Now we have the ridiculous situation in which an entire generation of women of childbearing age have been trained to believe that major surgery (the cesarean) isn't painful or potentially harmful. Too often, women aren't shown that the pain of cesarean is felt after the surgery, so this aspect of the operation often comes as a big surprise. On the other hand, until fairly recently, there was little or no general knowledge of the fact that some women experience labor and birth as pleasurable — even orgasmic — experiences.

But does emphasizing this idea of the "perfect birth" set women up for feelings of failure or guilt?

The view that women who have had positive experiences giving birth vaginally should be quiet about them, lest they make a woman who had (or chooses) a cesarean feel bad or guilty, this doesn't seem a good idea. If we make ourselves mute in order to make sure that no one ever feels bad, we are likely contributing to ever higher levels of cesarean section and lower rates of initiation of breastfeeding.

This argument seems to come up a lot with breastfeeding. In your new book you write: "What other human activity would permit you to give your baby the best possible nurturing and health protection at the same time that you enhance your own long-term health, provide the most economical infant food possible, and protect the natural environment?" There are people who would say this makes women who aren't breastfeeding feel guilty.

I think it's possible to point out the advantages of breastfeeding without being judgmental about women who choose, or must choose, another form of feeding their babies. I tried hard to maintain a nonjudgmental tone throughout my book, because I recognize that not every mother will be able to exclusively breastfeed her child, given the many obstacles to initiating and maintaining breastfeeding that exist in our society. I want mothers and fathers to understand that their bottle-fed babies will benefit greatly from being cuddled as they are being fed — the same physical closeness that is part and parcel of breastfeeding.

Whether we like it or not, breastfeeding needs to be promoted in our society, and facts about it need to be known.

You write about how stress levels can actually stop breastmilk from flowing, because stress interferes with the release of oxytocin. How significant is this in terms of childbearing in general?

There's a big difference between exogenous oxytocin (the kind that is put into intravenous lines or syringes for injection) and endogenous oxytocin (the kind that is produced by our own bodies). What happens too often in our maternity wards in this country is that women are so stressed and frightened in labor that they have high adrenaline levels. These same women, if they had had proper preparation for labor and birth and if they had doulas or midwives with them throughout labor, would have adrenaline levels so low as to permit their own oxytocin to flow freely, thus helping them to progress well in labor and to give birth vaginally.

One of the reasons that we in the US have such high rates of cesarean section is that we fail to make it possible for women to have high levels of their own oxytocin during labor, because we don't understand why and how we should create relaxing atmospheres in which women can give birth.

You call breastfeeding a "lost art." This seems to be frustrating to many women: i.e., if it's so normal and natural and healthy, why does it seem to be so difficult?

Mammals — whatever the species — have trouble lactating or getting their milk into their young when they are forced to be in stressful environments. Milk doesn't flow from mother to infant unless the mother and her newborn are able to spend uninterrupted time with each other. The human is the only mammalian species that routinely separates its newborns from their mothers during the first few hours following birth.

Babies' cords are cut immediately after birth, and they're carried away to be examined, washed with soap, weighed, measured, and given antibiotic eye ointments. Anyone who is serious about giving babies the best possible chance to breastfeed doesn't separate babies and mothers for reasons like these.

And labor interventions can impact breastfeeding.

We tend to blame the problems on women's bodies, or even on "nature's design." In fact, there's nothing wrong with nature's design; it still works perfectly fine, but nature never meant us to live at the fast pace that young parents are almost forced to consider normal at the present day.

It's much easier for any woman to breastfeed if she has had the gift of watching many other mothers breastfeed. We are social creatures, and we learn from watching others. Primatologists have learned that primates in captivity have trouble nurturing their young unless they are permitted to live in social groups. We humans have yet to learn this about ourselves. A lot of our young mothers live in great isolation from each other.

Which is why you call for a "breastfeeding culture." Is it possible in modern society?

Norway is a highly industrialized country that deliberately put together a breastfeeding culture in the 1970s in order to turn away from its previous habit of formula-feeding all but 20% of its newborn babies. They changed hospital policies, medical education, and social behavior. No longer were infant formula manufacturers able to use hospitals as places where breastfeeding could be sabotaged at the get-go. Norwegians weren't used to seeing mothers breastfeeding in public. They learned to make accommodations for them, instead of demanding that these mothers make themselves invisible. Now Norway leads the world in breastfeeding.

Until that happens in the United States, what's your advice to new mothers?
I hope that over the next couple of decades we in the U.S. will have learned to create places in which women will be able to feed their babies in public, however and wherever they have chosen to do this. No one ought to be rude or judgmental about a woman feeding her baby. My advice to mothers is: do what you need to do, and don't assume that people will be judgmental or rude to you. You are doing everyone a favor by feeding your baby instead of forcing him or her to cry until you manage to go into hiding.
It's actually healthy and good for all children to see babies being breastfed. It helps to create sanity.

Click to buy Ina May's book!

He claims that most young people recognize him from Ocean?s Eleven (and Twelve and Thirteen), but even if you don?t know him on sight, you owe Carl Reiner for pretty much everything good about American comedy. Like SNL? Reiner perfected the sketch comedy format as a writer/performer on Your Show of Shows in the ?50s. Fan of 30 Rock? Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1961, which pioneered the behind-the-scenes-of-a-show sitcom. Into Judd Apatow? His intellectual wackiness was heavily influenced by the Reiner-directed 1979 film The Jerk. Not to mention his novels, memoirs, Broadway plays, and notable offspring (like director Rob Reiner). For his latest trick, Carl Reiner has written a children?s book, Tell Me Another Scary Story . . . But Not Too Scary! It?s a Halloween-y sequel to a book he published two years ago, inspired by one of his five grandchildren. He also narrates the accompanying CD, which warns children to stop reading if things are getting too scary. Babble spoke to Reiner about the book and other parent-related highlights of his long, funny career. — Gwynne Watkins

Your "scary laugh" on the Tell Me Another Scary Story CD is really scary!

I?m so happy we?re talking about it! I love that little book. Are you looking at the new one or the first one?

I?m looking at the new one. It?s really creepy. I was sort of flipping ahead to make sure everyone was okay by the end.

I think that?s the trick that I found. I wrote the first book? because somebody asked me if I had a children?s book in me, and I didn?t know that I did until I remembered my grandchild, Nikki, one of Rob?s kids. I used to tell him stories, and one day he asked me, 'Tell me a scary story, Grandpa, but not too scary.' And I think that little key made the first book a real winner, because teachers would tell me they?d read it in their Kindergarten and all the [kids would] say 'No, no turn, turn!' and I loved that little interplay. I think for me the most fun of the book is the interplay with the children as you read it.

How old are your grandchildren now?

The oldest one is grown up. He?s eighteen. Rob also has a sixteen-year-old, and an eleven-year-old. Lukas has a ten-year-old and a six-year-old.

How do you find being a grandparent compared to being a parent?

Oh much, much easier. It?s a snap. They bring them over to play and say hello and get around a little and then they take them home. Responsibility is much less daunting.

You?re actually the same age as my grandparents, who used to play me The 2000-Year-Old Man when I was a kid. Do you play your comedy for your grandkids?

No, I don?t, but I?m sure my children have played it for them. I?m very gratified to hear that people come up to me — young people — and I say, where did you hear it? And they all say, my mother played it, my father played it. I?m amazed by it. We?re very pleased, Mel [Brooks] and I, that they put together all five albums into a box set for Christmas and they?re going to be re-released, and we?re going to Washington and the Library of Congress is going to install it into the Library of Congress.

Back to the book: you haven?t done much in terms of scary stuff in your career.

No, that?s not my genre. My genre is to make people giggle. As a matter of fact, the two new children?s books I have in the hopper right now, which are ready for next year, I really think are the best of the bunch. One is called Tell Me A Silly Story, and the other is Tell Me a Sillier Story.?The two of them, I just love them.

Have you tested those out with kids yet?

Oh yes, I read them to my family members and they giggled. Kids love the words "silly." As soon as I start it, they start to giggle.

Do you find it easier to be silly now that you?re older?

I?ve always been silly! But it doesn?t sit as well on older people. They think you?re becoming senile rather than silly.

So when you were raising your kids and doing all the million amazing things you?ve done in your career, how aware were your kids of what you did for a living?

When I first started, Robby was very small, and when he saw me on television — we didn?t know what television was in those days. It was 1950. He was born in 1947, so he was three when I was on shows. It was just an image. It could?ve been a picture, a photograph. But he looked, he pointed. Kids still do that when they see their parents on television. He grew up with a fairly normal life, mainly they had two parents who had good work ethics and I think that?s what they got from us. They always saw us doing something. My wife was a painter and a singer, and every one of my children is very adept at dealing with the world, they?re really very comfortable people and very non-toxic people. I have great kids.

The Dick Van Dyke Show was based on your family, and it?s still funny and true all these years later.

One of the biggest thrills I got was when Barack Obama was running for President and he published his autobiography. I was just enjoying the thrill of where he came from and who he became, but at one point he wrote, 'I got a kick out of watching my wife enjoying the reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I said, 'Wow!' And later on, I heard her say in person that he invited her to go some place, and she said, 'I?d rather stay in Chicago and watch re-runs.' The re-runs were running in Chicago during the election because the Midwest had bought up all the rights. And I got such a kick out of it, and I said, of course he?s going to be a good President. He?s got good taste!

Well, it?s still one of the smartest sitcoms ever created! Were there any moments when you were working on the show, and you thought hmm, I don?t think this story has ever been told before on TV?

A few times I felt that. As a matter of fact, one of them almost made me quit the show. In the first year, I came up with a show — not very original — but the little boy asked his mother, 'Where do I come from?' and she actually said, 'Well, you came from my belly.' And he said, 'Oh, I know that. But do I come from New York or New Jersey?' That?s what he wants to know.

Well, they made me take that line out. And I said, 'Why don?t you want me to say that?' And [the network censor] said, well a lot of people tell their kids that a stork brought them or they?re found in a cabbage patch. I said, 'Well that?s not true, is it? Isn?t that lying?' And I said if parents want to tell their kids that and they see this on the air, they can tell their kids, no, that?s not true, you came from a cabbage patch, if they wanna lie. But I said, 'Telling the truth should be a priority on television!' And I said it certainly brings up the subject if people want to discuss it, and it will help people say, 'Oh yeah, that?s right.' You only tell a kid as much as he needs to know at a certain age. You don?t go into the graphics. I mean, I researched it before I did it.

And I was so angry I almost left the show, but I didn?t have enough screw-you money at the time. A year later, I might have said, I?m out of here. Now instead of saying 'from your belly,' he reaches for Dr. Spock to see how to tell him scientifically since the kid wants to know. So I never got to say that line. That line was cut.

So you did The Dick Van Dyke Show, you?ve got all these movies under your belt that people still watch and love —? of all the things you?ve created, what?s the thing that people are talking to you most about now on a day-to-day basis?

Well, mostly, if we?re going to reminisce, I think The Dick van Dyke Show, and The 2000-Year-Old Man, which we talked about. Of course, now that I did all those Oceans, they know me from that. If I hadn?t done that, people wouldn?t know who I was.

Just to end this on a Halloweenie note, what?s the scariest thing that?s happened to you on a TV or film set?

It?s not scary, but there was a show called Your Show of Shows years ago. It was unheard of for good comedians to break each other up and laugh. There were fake break-ups. Some comedians used to fake breaking up and laughing at their own joke and the audience feeling like they were in on something, that you couldn?t control yourself. But we always felt like that was out-of-bounds. We tried very hard to never break each other up. But sometimes: things would happen.

I remember we did Two English Barristers, myself and Sid Caesar, and we were discussing a case while we're playing pool. The joke was that we had the table scored, little pieces of felt were cut so that when he took a shot, the pool cue went under the felt rather than hitting the ball. So when he picked the pool cue up, it would rip the felt on the table. And that was funny. People were roaring with laughter.

Well there?s a warp and a woof to cloth, and when he went under the cloth and pulled the pool cue up, it broke in half. And he?s left with a club in his hand. And he?s walking around with a billy club, looking for the next shot. And my line after that is [upper-class British accent] 'Good shot!' and I?m almost biting my lip because, 'good shot?' He just broke his pool cue in half! And he?s walking around looking for the next shot and I know he?s going to do something crazy. I?m just trying to hold myself together, and he swings it like a polo mallet, and knocks the ball off the table and off the wall. And my next line is 'Good shot!' and I cue it up. And I actually bit my lip and blood was coming in my mouth, I could feel it. But I didn?t laugh. And that was scariest thing to me: to hold laughter back from the audience.

Susan Linn is serious about play, which makes sense ? she?s an award-winning ventriloquist and internationally known puppeteer and one of the late Fred Rogers? collaborators. But Linn also fears for the very survival of play, a concern that stems from her work as Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center, and Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She?s found that unfortunately, we can no longer take it for granted that children know how to play pretend.

Kids? ability and opportunities to make believe are threatened from all fronts, says Linn, and that includes by their parents. And, lest you underestimated its importance, Linn reminds us that the UN?s Convention on the Rights of the Child lists play as a guaranteed right, next to access to nutritious food and clean drinking water.

Babble spoke with Linn about The Case for Make Believe (recently released in paperback), how to best nurture our children?s instinctual yearning for creative play, and what she learned in Mister Rogers? neighborhood. (Check out an excerpt here.) ? Emily Frost

Why is make believe so fundamental to our children?s development, and to their development as good citizens?

It is the foundation of creativity and constructive problem solving. It?s how children learn to wrestle with life, to make it meaningful. It is through creative play that children learn cooperation, social coping skills, and negotiation. But also, it?s how they learn divergent and critical thinking, and how they feel empowered to take action ? those are all especially important in a democratic citizenry.

How are today?s parents stifling play without realizing it?

It?s not that I?m placing the blame solely on parents ? this is a societal issue. And yet, as we need to work to change society, there are also things parents can do within their family.

Kids aren?t playing freely outdoors as much anymore, and one of the reasons that parents give for that is stranger danger. Yet the statistics on stranger kidnappings haven?t changed in the past twenty-five years. But parents perceive that the world as a dangerous place. And certainly there are neighborhoods where it is dangerous for kids to be out alone. But, there are lots of neighborhoods where that?s not the case.

Another way is the push to structure children?s time so that there always have to be organized things for children to do, instead of just letting children create their own amusement.

But one of the biggest problems is the commercialization of children?s lives and this push by the media, and toy and marketing industries, to convince parents and children that children need the things that corporations sell in order to play, in order to be creative, and that whatever children can make up by themselves isn?t good enough.

You?re not a fan of certain very popular computerized toys. Why is that??

A good toy, a toy that nurtures creative play is ninety percent child and only ten percent toy. Play is useful for children, and engaging and exciting for children, when they drive the play, when they?re in charge of what?s going to happen in the play. What?s happening with toys like Tickle Me Elmo is that they interfere with that process.?Elmo is a media character, linked to a media program that children are very familiar with. Children play less creatively with media-linked toys because who the character is, and what the character says and does are already embedded in the toy. If they see the media program a lot, the script gets embedded in the child?s brain and then kids are just imitating with media linked toys, they?re not engaged in creativity.

But the other concern about toys like Tickle Me Elmo is that they?re embedded with computer chips, so the toys sing and dance and talk and do back flips, but all the child is doing is pressing a button to make that happen, and that?s not a creative experience for children, and really, the toys are having more fun than the kids. And parents are convinced that children need this kind of toy because it is modern and technological. But really, those toys are pretty useless in terms of promoting the kind of creative play that is fundamental to children?s well-being.

Would you say there's a class difference in access to non-branded, low-tech toys? And if so, what can we do to address the disparity?

Well, one of the problems is that it is hard to find unbranded toys for young children. It?s possible, but you find them at high-end, specialty toy stores. If you go to Wal-Mart or Toys 'R' Us or Target or the place where working-class people shop, then what you find are endless rows of media branded products and plastic, commercial, chip-embedded toys.

One thing we could do about that is make sure that child care centers, preschools, and schools provide an alternative to commercial culture, so that children have the experience of time spent away from the kinds of products whose advertising they?re constantly bombarded with. But some schools and childcare centers use TV or computers to calm children down. There?s also pressure from parents who feel that kids need to gain technological skills, practically from birth. But that doesn?t really make any sense. Postponing that a few years is not going to hurt a child?s ability to engage with technology.

As much as you fault the media and our obsession with screen time, you?re not anti-TV at all. In fact, you worked closely with the late Fred Rogers and television was very important to your childhood.

I?m not one of these "pull the plug and move to the woods" people. In fact, television had a very positive and profound impact on my creative life as a child. And, I really struggled with that when I wrote The Case for Make Believe. I kept saying to myself, "Why am I so critical about today?s media culture when in fact, I benefited from television and movies, from screen media? What?s the difference?" And the difference is access. I saw Peter Pan at the movies once when I was six. I didn?t see it again until I was nineteen. I was so delighted by it, but if I wanted to enter that world, the only way I could do it was to play about it. But today, children can see movies or television programs over and over and over again ? and so they don?t have to play creatively in order to enter that world. They can just press a button and there it is. They don?t get a chance to exercise their creative muscle.

What?s your favorite memory of Fred Rogers and his neighborhood?

I did a bit for his show where I did a whole spontaneous interaction with my puppets and when I finished he said, "That was wonderful Susan. And do you know why? Because you let you come out." He was who he was. It wasn?t an act.

Another one ? a memory that means so much to me, was actually the last time I ever saw him. He was speaking at Wheelock College and I went to hear him and went back to say "hi." It was at a time when my daughter was quite ill and he took my hand and said "Susan, how are you? How?s your daughter?" and I stood in the middle of that room, filled with people who wanted to talk with him, and told him about my daughter. And he stood there listening intently as though there was nobody else in the room. Then a few days later I got a little book in the mail from him, his book, You are Special and he had written "I just thought you might need this." That means a lot to me and the opportunity to be mentored by him is something I will just carry with me forever.

When children are playing in a way that involves enacting violent scenes, often our first instinct is to immediately stop them or redirect them. But you?d disagree with that course of action ? why is that?

Yes. I think that playing about violence and playing about scary things is a way for children to cope with their fears, their anger, and things that they may experience in their lives. And children have always played about violence; they?ve played wars or they?ve played about scary monsters or cops and robbers, for instance. That kind of play can be exciting and fun and it is a way for children to gain mastery over what can be a very scary world, even in the most protected child?s life.

But there?s a difference between play that is merely a capitulation of what kids see on the screen and play that is really working something through. Preschool teachers report that the play of children immersed in Spider Man, for instance, and all things Spider Man, is merely repetitive violence. And if kids are immersed in the film and immersed in the toys, we need to let them play about it, because that?s how they work things out.

The challenge is: is there a way to move the play beyond the script so that it can have some more meaning and creativity for the children? Can you use clay to build a cave for Spider Man? Can you make Spider Man lunch? Can you build Spider Man?s house with blocks? Anything adults can do to shift the play a little bit is helpful. I have spent time finding myself arguing (I?m using the word argument lightly here) with kids because I want to deviate from a television program or set script and the kids don?t want to. The scripts are very, very powerful. And with boys it is violence and with girls it is this kind of sexualized, gender stereotyped play. And I have seen that a lot.

What can parents do, and what can we do as a society, to protect play?

This is the first generation of parents that really have to consciously and actively carve out commercial free time, space and silence for their children to play creatively. If they just let things go along, it?s not going to happen, because for the first time in history, when children have leisure time, we can?t assume that they?re engaged in creative play; they?re either engaged with screens or they?re engaged in this rote sort of scripted play. Parents really have to make active decisions to nurture creative play and they can do that in a variety of ways.

One way is to limit screen time. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under the age of two, and only an hour or two a day for older children. So, that?s one thing that parents really do have to do.

Another thing is to be thoughtful about the kinds of toys and equipment that you give your children. Think about purchasing toys that can do more than one thing, toys that lay there until a child invests them with life, toys that are tools for creating things, from simple musical instruments to art supplies; those are the toys that will really nurture creative play and give your children hours of pleasure.

And get your children outside. Nature is a great antidote to commercialism and children play more creatively in green spaces.

And what some families are doing is having screen-free nights where there are no cell phones, computers, television, or mp3 players and families do things together. The first one might be hard but what families are reporting is that it is really fun. It?s nice for families to be able to interact together. Family meals are important for all sorts of reasons but family meals are where you sit around and talk, where family history gets passed on.

So all of these things that a couple generations ago, or even a generation ago, we used to just take all of this for granted, but we can?t anymore. It?s bizarre, but we?ve reached a point where nurturing creative play is actually counter-cultural. Creative play is actually a threat to corporate profits. Children who play creatively don?t need as many of the things corporations sell to us, they?re not as dependent on them.

Susan Linn also works with The Campaign for A Commercial Free Childhood, where you can find more resources on nurturing creative play.